How I Came to Discover a New Gourmet Food

Here's a little immediate gratification for you: the gourmet food in question involved chocolate and its discovery was quite an accident. It is also not a concoction I will be repeating anytime soon. More on that later. The food is not at all the point of this post; rather, its discovery simply epitomizes what kind of day I had on Friday. And here we go.

You may or may not know that little Troy has been sick for the past two months, since our trip to California (which, hm, does not appear on this blog. Some other time.) in November. He's just had this wheezing cough and struggles to breathe and can't sleep well at night. I'd already taken him in to the pediatrician I think three times for the same illness previously. They put him on a nebulizer with albuterol (a bronchiodilator) for a few weeks, which helped a bit, and then added a steroid, which did not. On Friday we went in again for his 4-month check-up, and his doctors were surprised to see him still in such a condition. While they were listening to his lungs on his bare chest, you could see his chest sucking in with every breath. I felt like such an inattentive mom because I'd thought he was a little better (the day before I swear he WAS a bit better) and said he hadn't had a fever or anything. (They next clocked his temp at 99.8.) He also had an ear infection. Um apparently my maternal instincts are broken. His oxygen levels were also low, so they tried another nebulizer treatment right then to see if his levels improved, which they did not. (In fact they were lower!) We were there for nearly two hours and meanwhile Kate and Brooklyn, who of course were with me, bounced around that little exam room like crazy ping pong balls. A couple of the pediatricians consulted together, saying he needed a chest x-ray ASAP and trying to decide whether to send us to the ER or to outpatient radiology, all the while stealing sideways glances at my wild daughters who by this point are pulling the paper off the table and sprinkling the whole room with tissues. Troy's doctor finally concluded that we should just do the x-ray and wait for the results before admitting him, rather than sitting in the ER waiting room for 8 hours (we all know that's what would have happened, the doctor included). So she asked hesitantly, "Do you have someone to take your girls?" [Translation: Please don't try to take them with you to the hospital like you did today!] Me: "Um sure, I'll just call my husband, or I'm sure I can find a neighbor..." She seemed satisfied and had me call the radiology dept. right away to make sure we could get in. I called Travis too who informed me that he was super busy and let him know if I couldn't find anyone else. So we finally left the office. I think the doctors were trying to let me know how serious his situation was without scaring me.

We got into the car and by this point I was already worn out after a rough morning getting the girls out the door and then the confinement of their craziness at the office. They were just not on my side that day. And I might insert a side note here that I think part of the reason I've neglected the blog lately was in hopes that I would lose all following except the people who are closest to me so that I can blog embarrassing stuff without [as many] people reading. Except the ones who understand. Which is you. Right? Good. So we started driving and right away a song came on where the words just hit me at the right angle, you know? It was my inner teenager coming out where I listen to deep and poetic and meaningful lyrics (did you catch the sarcasm? Because obviously they were not.) which summarize my whole existence, and of course I just broke down crying. My girls were kind of surprised and kept asking me what happened, and I couldn't even talk. Kate, ever the considerate one, even asked me, "Do you just need a break from us?" Ha! It was even embarrassing in front of them, because I just kept thinking, "This is ridiculous. HOW old am I?"

Well we made it home and I had to (QUICKLY) feed everyone lunch and figure out what to do with the girls so I could take Troy in for an x-ray. I was totally at a loss so I called Travis again and told him I needed him. (Turns out he was glad to get away even though he lost the 3 hours worth of work he'd done that morning. By this point I had a hard time feeling even a little bit bad about it.) This is the part with the food. During all the multi-tasking, I was making lunch for the girls and reheating last night's chili for myself. Also they wanted hot chocolate and I felt like they deserved it after such a rough and boring and emotionally distraught morning. I was deeply musing over my plight and planning my next move when I looked down to discover that I was grating cheddar cheese into my hot chocolate. (*Pause here to emphasize how much I LOOOOVE Cabot's seriously sharp white cheddar. In chili, of course. Not hot chocolate. Mmmm... Okay and we're back.*) I yelped and grabbed a spoon and tried to fish it out, but the hot chocolate was indeed piping hot, and the grated cheese practically melted on contact. Kate by this point thought I had officially lost my mind. And of course, I drank it anyway. Interesting, but... probably don't try it at home.

Okay fast-forward to the hospital. This is another sidetrack but is significant because it was one of the high points of my day. After checking Troy in I settled down for the first of many hour-long waits and picked up the nearest magazine. It was Woman's Day, and it was an older issue, from October. Of 1962. Not only that, but it was a 25th anniversary edition, so they had actually filled the editorials with letters from each of the past 25 years. I totally ate it up. My favorite had to be a new bride who wrote in in 1938 sharing the budget she had finally worked out for her household. She was budgeting her husband's generous income of $35 a week, and it included, among other things, $10.50 for rent, $5 for insurance, $6 for food and kitchen items, including ice and milk, $1 for clothing, and a personal allowance of $2.50 for her husband and $2 for herself. But I also enjoyed reading the things and advice and solutions people came up with to worry about 70+ years ago. Like why should washing day be on Monday? There is no hard and fast rule! One housewife does her washing on Tuesday instead! I especially liked the entries as they moved through the 40s and started discussing how they kept the war from their children while wondering where they would be a year from now, and how we shouldn't complain about how little our husbands help around the house, because when they are overseas with the Navy (as this particular husband was) you will realize exactly how valuable they are to you! (I also wondered if that husband came home.) Sorry, this was all a little diversion from the actual situation at hand, being my ailing son, and while it did offer me some perspective on how (and why) our lives are always so hard, back to the real story.

When we finally got into the room with the x-ray machine (I don't know, is there a name for that place?) they put Troy in a little mini hospital gown and strapped him into a medieval torture device. No really, that's how the resident tech described it to me. He had to sit upright on this tiny bicycle seat, and then I held both his little hands above his head while they clamped a clear plastic tube around his whole body that locked his arms straight up in the air. He looked like we were planning to shoot him off like a missile. And there was a little cut-out for his face, through which he looked at me like I had betrayed him. Luckily they took the x-rays quickly and he didn't cry for long. I wish I had pictures of this but clearly I don't.

Results: his lungs looked distended, the left more than right, which was concordant with bronchiolitis, his original diagnosis several weeks ago. Also there was some highlighting which could indicate pneumonia or else could just be from the wheezing. He was prescribed an oral steroid, antibiotics (which would also take care of the ear infection), and more albuterol for his nebulizer. And then we went home.

I was so relieved not to have to admit him to the hospital OR sit all day/night in the ER that I didn't even mind spending the rest of the day at the pharmacy and then cooking dinner for our missionaries (we'd planned this several weeks earlier) as well as their roommates, whom they'd asked to bring along when they called at 4:00 that afternoon. [No but really, we do love our missionaries and it was totally fine.] Troy had a really rough night and was no better in the morning, so we were back at the pediatrician's office the next morning (this time, sans Kate & Brooklyn since it was Saturday!) His oxygen levels were slightly better and he once again tested negative for RSV, so they decided we should do nothing more unless he gets worse and wait for the drugs to kick in. If he gets worse or can't eat or at least does not improve, we may end up taking him into the hospital for oxygen or IV fluids, or later, to a pulmonologist. As of today, he is about the same. (And that is why I am blogging instead of going to church! Erm... I mean... reading my scriptures. Yes.)

So that was the very very very long story which was, really, about Troy and not about food. I'm sorry if you were actually hoping for an awesome new recipe. But now that I think of it, we did have a really great shrimp bisque last week, so maybe I'll just go slap that recipe up on the recipe blog. There you go. Now your past hour was not a total loss, right? More updates on Troy (and the past several months) soon to come!